


Sacred

by Tinwoman



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Spoilers for episode 99, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 08:22:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11123415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tinwoman/pseuds/Tinwoman
Summary: Pike and Grog, and what it means to forgive.





	Sacred

**Author's Note:**

> Listen my dudes I just wanted to get this posted before the next episode makes it all obsolete, because MAN episode 99 hit me like a punch to the gut.

After Scanlan leaves, Pike closes the door and rests her forehead head against the door frame. It’s cool against her skin — everything in Whitestone is cooler than she’s used to, the surfaces pulling in heat like they’re starving for warmth — and she breathes out slowly, deliberately, willing her heart to stop hammering in her chest.

It’s beyond strange, seeing him again. Like seeing a ghost, a living ghost. _Can you get undead without evil?_ she wonders wearily. _Can you remove everything you thought you knew about a person and have them still standing afterward?_

Not undead then. Un-Scanlan. Anti-Scanlan. A Scanlan who could be twenty miles away from her, who could _hear_ her talking to him, could feel her reaching out, and after everything they’ve been through, stay silent. He let her — them all, really, and she knows she shouldn’t feel it like a personal attack, she knows the flirting and the romance was mostly a game for him, she _knows_ that, okay — he let them all think he was _dead._

And this bullshit, with the disguise and the illusion and _then_ , Scanlan probably didn’t realize she’d noticed, but then him in that room with Vex and the faint, acid taste in the air of a memory spell that just barely fizzled. He would’ve made her forget, would’ve grabbed what he wanted and run, would’ve gotten to see them all again without even once ounce of reciprocity, all on his terms (like fucking always, she thinks bitterly). That bastard. That _asshole_. That scheming, lying, mother _fucker_ —

She straightens, blinking hard and angry, and grabs a small leather strap to tie her hair up into a knot on the top of her head. Pulling it away from her face, hiding nothing, burning up hotter than anything in Whitestone. She opens the window and lets the night air flow into her room, sending the curtains billowing, the moonlight pooling all around her. It smells sharp and clean, pine like the wood of the ship she used to sail on. It smells good.

Closing her eyes, she replays the conversation with Scanlan in her head, trying to be gentle with herself as well as him. It could’ve gone worse, she tells herself. She said the main things, the important things. And she did hear him, she _did._ She understands, at least a little. She understands wanting to be better than you are. She understands that when Kaylee appeared in his life, his entire world shifted, both expanded to something so vast it was unfathomable and shrunk down to a single pinpoint.

Years ago she had felt something similar, when she took up the symbol of Sarenrae and bound herself in service to a Goddess. That shaky-ground, fragile-heart warmth that fills you up to the brim — it’s love, and it’s responsibility, and it’s putting your entire self into someone else’s hands. The power to crush you, but the power to raise you up, too.

To forgive your sins.

And maybe that’s it, she thinks, biting her lower lip and staring back out at the dark, whispered grounds. Pike had thought Scanlan understood that part of her, understood that better than anyone. That the dirty jokes and laughter and his beautiful voice were just a different form of the same thing that she feels when she prays to Sarenrae, that Kaylee made him _closer_ to that secret part of him that was in love with the whole world, not farther away.

She would’ve been fine, if he’d just explained and said goodbye and let them know how he was. It would’ve hurt, but she wouldn’t have tried to stop him. She’s had to leave too, after all -- she gets it, doesn’t she? So _why_ would he do this to them? Using his words like knives to sink into the softest, most vulnerable parts of them, and for what. So they would hate him enough to let him go? Or just because he was hurting so badly that he wanted to take them all down with him.

 _Kept alive by weird fucking magic_. She thought he understood, thought he actually understood the most important thing in her life, and the humiliation lodges like a stone in her throat again at the thought.

Resurrection spells are sacred. Holy. They’re the purest form of connection to Sarenrae, who guides every step of her life. It’s the breath of the gods poured into a mortal. It’s difficult and it doesn’t always work and it is _transcendent._

Weird fucking magic. How _dare_ he.

The clouds shift overhead, shadows pulling and rippling across the ground, and suddenly Pike sees a familiar shape sitting by one of the great stone fountains. Grog, his shoulders hunched with misery, and Pike is out the door before she’s even finished the thought.

 _Outside is better anyway,_ she thinks, her boots crunching on stone gravel and the carefully manicured ground. Outside there’s room to think, there’s space for all the anger and hurt and longing radiating off her, space even for the tiny, secret burst of pure joy that can’t fully repress, that Scanlan’s _alive_ , he’s alive and relatively whole and back with them again.

Grog doesn’t move when she approaches, but she’s sure he knows she’s there. Pretty tough to sneak up Grog, especially on his home turf, and she trusts that if he didn’t want her there he’d let her know. Things are always simple with Grog — not because he’s stupid, which, okay, he isn’t the brightest when it comes to scholarly pursuits, but it’s more than that. It’s not about what he lacks but what he has: total emotional honesty. He told her once that he didn’t mind dying, but he didn’t want to be killed by Kevdak, and she felt the truth of that in her bones like a holy text, like a sermon.

She sits next to him, cross-legged on the springy grass, and looks up.

His brows are drawn tight, his eyes dark and shuttered. With a start she realizes he’s bleeding — his knuckles are bloody, and even in the moonlight she can see the beginnings of bruises forming on his scarred face.

“Hi Grog,” she says softly, her voice almost lost in the wind and rustling leaves.

“Hi Pike,” he says, deep and rumbling and so familiar that for a moment her chest feels painfully tight.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says simply. He doesn’t shift his gaze; half his face in shadow, mouth twisted in a growl, eyes glittering with the an echo of the rage that fuels his incredible strength, but when he places a huge hand gently on her shoulder, she knows he’s there with her.

_I’m glad you’re here, I’m glad I’m not surrounded by people so desperate to fix our family that they refuse to acknowledge what Scanlan did to us, I’m glad I have you, I’m glad you’ll never leave me and I’ll never leave you, I’m glad you understand, I’m glad you’re angry and I’m glad we’re on the same team, I’m glad I don’t have to pretend to be okay with this when I’m with you, I’m glad you missed him as much as I did and I’m glad you’ve got my back, I love you, I love you, I love you._

Their relationship, it’s different from Vex and Vax, the twins so clever and educated and full of pretty words. Vex and Vax talk through their love, remind each other out loud to be the anchor of their worlds. Vex and Vax are, of course, actually related. But for her and Grog, it’s deeper, less verbose. Not better or more intense or more loving, just different. And tonight, when she can barely form words, can barely process what she’s actually feeling much less _talk_ about it, she’s so grateful for brother that tears begin prickling in her eyes for the first time that night.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Grog says after a long moment, and again Pike feels the strength coursing through him, can practically see the pain coming off him in waves, and another swell of rushing, liquid anger rises up in her.

_Did he even think about what he was doing to Grog? He could’ve let us know he was alive. He could’ve been kinder. He must’ve known it would hurt me and Grog the most._

“Save me a piece,” she says tightly, and he finally looks down at her, expression softening into something only a treasured few ever see. The sharp-edged snarl bleeding into concern, into the man who saved Wilhand and lost everything, and his massive hand tightens momentarily on her shoulder.

“Oh. Oh, Pike,” he says, more tender and gentle than anyone would ever give him credit for. She gives him a small, watery smile. Not a fake smile. Not a ‘let’s all pretend this is fine’ smile, but trying to live up to the example he sets every day. Not for Scanlan but for him.

“I'll be okay,” she says. It’s true — she’s angry, and Grog is angry, and she’s not sure when either of them will stop being angry, but her heart’s not broken or beyond repair.

“Yeah,” he says, and again that thread of understanding stretches between them.

“I just thought I knew him, you know?” she says, and Grog nods slowly. “I thought he knew me, knew us. But it wasn’t true. And now I have to decide how to feel about him all over again. A new person, almost.”

Grog gives a short, mocking laugh. “I don’t have to. I don’t have to have anything to do with him anymore.”

“You really don’t,” she says, and she means it. Most people don’t understand that tenant of Sarenrae: forgiveness is sacred. It doesn’t mean that forgiveness is automatic, than wanting absolution means everyone you’ve wronged is obligated to give it you. It means the opposite — that forgiveness exalts only if it’s genuine. Only if you feel it in your blood, in every beat of your heart. Anything else is a pale imitation. Anything else is profane.

Grog doesn’t owe Scanlan a damn thing.

“He loved you,” Grog says quietly. “He did.”

Pike closes her eyes and presses her hands down in the grass. Wind, cool and light with a hint of rain, whispers across her face. “I know.”

Scanlan loved her, and she loved him back in her own way. But he didn’t love himself. She never could’ve filled the empty places in him, and some part of her must have known that. He might be closer to loving himself now. She hopes, even through the black tangle of betrayal and hurt around her heart, that he does.

She doesn’t know what’s left between them anymore. It’s true that he didn’t see her the way she wanted him to, the way she believed he did, but she didn’t see him either. Scanlan’s always been a mirror, reflecting back what other people wanted to see, and even though she would’ve sworn on her life that she was the exception...she wasn’t. In the end, she was just like everyone else.

The truth is, she let him down too. She didn’t give him what he needed — not sex or romance, but to see him. She dressed him up in her nightgown for a joke, to make him happy, to prove that she was capable of fun and levity just like he was, but all she did was hurt him, press down on a sore spot when he was more vulnerable than he’d ever been in his life. She didn’t see him any clearer than he saw her.

Maybe Scanlan doesn’t owe her a damn thing, either.

They sit outside for a bit longer, not speaking, alone together for the first time in a long time. Breathing in and out, the moon drifting huge and ancient across the sky. The first time she came to Whitestone, it was through hallowed magic, through another person’s astral projection spell. And now it’s home. And now Scanlan’s back. Now everything’s different. Again.

She can feel, for a moment, someone watching them. She doesn’t turn around.

**Author's Note:**

> I also have a [tumblr](http://tinwomanrunaway.tumblr.com/) where I gush more about the best thing on earth: Pike and Grog's sibling relationship.


End file.
